I´m just finishing off a four year teaching stint in Madrid, Spain and I am heading down to Santiago on 24 February. I was there in September for nearly a month visiting my Chilean girlfriend and I have given up my job here in Spain to go there and be with her.

I´m hoping to find work in Santiago teaching English and was wondering if anyone had some advice on accomodation as I won´t be living with my girlfriend until we get married.

I used contact chile. In the the sense that i used them to find a place to live through them, told them i wasn't interested and then went back to the owner of the house, offered him 15% of what i'd pay contact chile and moved in....morally not so hot but i didn't fancy the $100+ fee...

Some of the prices they quote are high but there are some decent ones there. The house i lived in was sold and no longer exists as a house for foreigners. Also, it can be good to use contact chile as there is generally no minimum stay and you can look around for somewhere else and not have to stay in a grotty hotel whilst doing so.

Apartments from the 'paper can be pricey and you'll have to find furniture etc a lot of the time as well, furnished places are often horrible dark run down places used by men who've been kicked out by their wives or as shag-pads for their mistresses, or are expensive.

Hope you enjoy santiago, i personally can't stand the place (my girlfriend's chilena as well so i went there for a few months to be with her and go back on a regular basis). Couldn't wait to leave and get back to some culture, sophistication and clean air in buenos aires, although it makes things with the girlf a bit trickier...!

That was a smart move you made with Contact Chile! I suppose accomodation is just a big gamble and you might be lucky and then again maybe not. I was in Santiago for three weeks in September. It is an ugly city with little going for it and a no go area for asthma sufferers. However, the people I met through my Chilean girlfriend made it worthwhile and Matty are you sure that it´s not worth the sacrifice to be with the one you love? I´ve just left a good job in Spain in one of the nicest areas to go to that polluted city - all for love. By the way, did you teach English in Santiago and have you got any advice on that?

I made the move for almost 4 months out of love and i can honestly say that this love would not have survived me staying in santiarsehole as it's a soul-sucking, polluted, god-forsaken hell-hole. I feel like my spirit is being rapidly crushed whenever i'm there and try to get away to the seaside as soon as possible. Good to hear you met some nice people, my girlf's friends were also really nice but i found, in general, people from santiago to be rude, arrogant, obnoxious, totally classist and extremely racist. The constant barging of people out of the way without any attempt to let people pass in the street, the glum and moody faces and total lack of 'disculpe' 'perdon' 'lo siento' and 'gracias' all made me want to get the hell out...and the language...my god.....pero me tinka que te vas a divertir po if you're with your girlf...although the food (except the great seafood) can be a bit hard on your guata, chachai??

As for teaching, i didn't work all that much but got private students through my girlfriend and her associates.

Me haces reir con eso de cachai. Me recuerda de cuando mi novia estaba hablando. Fue asi: Fui con la Vicki, la Vero y la Claudia, cachai? Fuimos a un bar, cachai? etc etc They use the definite article before names which is not good Spanish. Having said that I think she speaks well. Comparing her with an argentina con quien salia antes the accent is quite similar although probably the argentina spoke better. But she was dead false and I went off Argentina after that.

By the way, if there is anyone going to Chile at the end of February or March and is looking to share a flat put yourself in contact with me.

Yeah, i've got so used to hearing my girlfriend's friends' names preceded by 'la' that i use it too when i'm there because 'Luli' just sounds wrong but 'la Luli' sounds right...wouldn't even cross my mind to do it here in Argieland...weird...it takes me a day or so to reorientate myself when i come back to Buenos Aires, the Italian accent throws me and i also start saying' ya ya ya ya ya ya' to everything as they do in chile. My girlfriend moans at me when i speak argentine as well!! And her friends laugh at me when i say 'y vos?'...

Mind if I act like a Chileno and barge in your private conversation, guevones? I, too, am here as a victim of love. I, too, would leave this pit if I could but I'm sticking it out for now as I've lucked into some good work at the moment.

As for apartments, look for dueños when you rent because they're a bit more flexible - no less flaky than the corredores de propriedades but they can be less by the book as for paperwork. I went into El Mercurio's website when I was recently looking and you can use that as a wordsearch to focus on that.

jeez, hope that's not emphysema your coming down with dennis...love is, i think, the only reason anyone would choose to move there...the amount of foreign students i met (i lived in a foreigners' house with my girlfriend for the time i was there, low rent, all included very easy) who were absolutely kicking themselves for choosing santiago over buenos aires was amazing...i still recoil in shock and almost horror when i meet a foreigner who actually likes the city (i'm not including their friends in this equation by the way, just the city and its people in general) as i think they must be slightly mental and i tend to try to avoid nutters...

It is true that Argentinas are so up their own ars es that they eat their food twice but in general i find Argentines to be 100 times friendlier and open than Chileans. Also, Argentinas don't (normally) go out with a 'westerner' because he is a 'westerner', basically because the argie men look very similar. Chileans very much see 'catching' a foreigner as a huge jump in their social status.

My girlfriend is (honestly) not bothered about this aspect, she prefers to go out with me rather than a chileno because she doesn't like the latino attitude towards women but she's had to put up with friends and relatives saying things like 'Oh, well done, you went to England and brought back a man' (not actually true) and a couple of her relatives who hadn't said a word to her in years suddenly started talking to her again after they met me!! The country is so classist it's unbelievable and the way people treat each other reminds me very much of the decade of my childhood (the '80s), self-centred, money and class obsessed-you'll be seeing a lot of the Iron Lady out here Don

Argentina is much more relaxed and since the economic meltdown the people have had a long hard look at themselves and are very different. Less arrogant (Chileans have taken over the mantle as the most arrogant in South America now), friendlier, more polite, more cultured. They are a very proud people and make a lot of effort to look good and also to look after the city they live in. There's much more civic pride here, you get more dirty looks for dropping litter here for example and the local governments make sure that public spaces are looked after and lit up (something that just doesn't happen in Chile). Instead of tearing down old, historic buildings, like in santiago, here they are often restored and converted (my building is an incredibly beautiful old government building converted into flats) and they give subsidies to the owners of these buildings to keep them looking good. Of course not everything in Argentina is sweetness and light, the country's got some major problems (crime, corruption, the economy, Maradona-well he's my problem actually ) but it's just so far ahead of Chile in cultural terms that i think it's worth the (very) slight extra risk of being a victim of crime.

If i had the choice between santiago and pit full of excrement i'd choose that pit without needing to think...